Building Confidence from the Inside Out

"The self-confidence one builds from achieving difficult things and accomplishing goals is the most beautiful thing of all." - Madonna

Confidence is something that I have lacked in the past, at different stages in my life. As a little kid, I often lacked the confidence to stick up for myself, so I buddied up with people who had no issue standing up for both of us (thank you, Natalie!). As a teenager coming into my own, I lacked the confidence in myself to be bold in friendships and romantic relationships, instead taking the supportive role in most of them. As an adult, my confidence was often wrapped up in my identity as it related to other people - good student, capable employee, smart daughter, loyal wife, loving mom. 

Unfortunately, for a lot of young women who grew up at the turn of the 21st century, our confidence was built into our outward appearance, how similar we looked to celebrities, and how much our clothes resembled those of the popular groups in school or on TV shows. As my body has changed from being a teenager with a questionable relationship with food to a young mom of twins to a single mom in my mid-twenties to a married woman and mom of four in my thirties and forties, I've had to learn to accept my body at each stage, or ignore the elephant in the room that was dragging my confidence now. Of course, my reliance on things like alcohol and food to cover up my insecurities and put a mask over my lack of confidence didn't help matters. 

When I decided to have gastric bypass surgery in 2022, I absolutely hated myself. I hated my body, even though it had given birth to four beautiful kids whom I adored, and had survived hard days and mental health circumstances and self-abuse in more ways than one. I looked at my body as something to hide, and blamed a lot of my unhappiness on how I looked on the outside. 

Now, I can look at the outside and see all of the work I've done on the inside. I'm at a place where I appreciate my body for what it can do today, versus hating what it is because of what it's been through in 41 years. I look at the progress I've made in the last 11 months since my gastric bypass surgery, and I'm proud of getting through those first few months where it was really hard to adjust to a new way of eating and living and treating my body as a resource rather than abusing it. Even more so in the last six+ months since I stopped drinking alcohol to mask my feelings and lack of self-confidence, I've seen the way my face has changed, and how my smile looks genuine rather than forced. I see the extra skin and chubbiness on my stomach and the stretch marks from carrying babies and I appreciate all the hard stuff my body has survived and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into getting me to this point. I don't weight myself as often anymore, but I'm somewhere around 95 pounds lost since April 26, 2023. I am down about four pants sizes, depending on the brand, and I feel comfortable in my clothes again. I can walk up three flights of stairs without getting winded. My knees don't hurt all the time from the extra weight my body is carrying. When I laugh, it comes from a place deep within my body, instead of feeling like it needs to be pushed out just to put on appearances that everything is ok. 

Change is possible. People can change. Bodies can change. Lives can change. I know without a doubt that the self-confidence I carry today is a direct result of the goals I've accomplished and am still working towards. Even the commitment to reaching goals is something new for me. I would often start things and feel like I couldn't accomplish the goal, and then quickly quit or change the goal to make it less difficult on myself. Not anymore. Today, I have lofty goals for myself. I want to continue making positive changes in a lot of areas of my life. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to get a second chance to do things, and to appreciate the beauty in achieving difficult things.